Mariana Pitta Lima
12/30/2024 | Reflections

Biomedical technologies in reproductive care, such as those for terminating pregnancies and treating their complications, or childbirth technologies, can save lives. Feminist scholars in the Social Studies of Science and Technology focusing on health in their research have already shown this. These scholars have also demonstrated throughout their scientific production that technologies in the ways they are practised can incorporate values of gender and racial discrimination to unequally affect specific populations. 

In this post, I explore the engagement of reproductive health research conducted "in the South" with Feminist STS, using the example of the chapter Technologies, Gender and Health from a forthcoming Handbook of Feminist Anthropology. This work is based on empirical data from two ethnographies conducted in Salvador, Bahia, a city located in the north-east of Brazil, written by me in co-authorship with Cecilia McCallum and Ana Paula Dos Reis. 

The chapter is part of The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Anthropology, edited by Professor Pamela Geller, published on 23 December. The book presents a global and interdisciplinary panorama of the field of feminist anthropology, emphasising how this production relates to current movements, including social justice, extreme environmental disasters, intersectional analyses, and covers a wide range of topics that demonstrate the expansion of the field in recent decades and its potential and usefulness in addressing contemporary issues.
 

The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Anthropology - Edited By Pamela L. Geller [Image credit: Routledge]
 

One of the ethnographies discussed in the chapter is from my PhD in Public Health research at a public maternity hospital, focusing on the practices of biomedical technologies in post-abortion care complications. The other ethnography, conducted by Ana Paula Dos Reis, focuses on gynaecology and obstetrics courses for medical students. We engaged with Feminist STS literature to analyse our empirical work. Rather than exploring the content of the chapter, I use it as an example of producing collaborations "from the South" for the STS field, to discuss possibilities for engaging with and contributing to STS scholarly production.  

In a piece published by the editorial team of Science, Technology, & Human Values (ST&HV) on contributions to the field in formation, the authors emphasise the distinction between collaborating to STS and with STS. Collaborating with STS highlights the dynamic and processual nature of the field's construction. In my research, I have aimed to benefit from the prolific production of Feminist STS, including contributions from the field and collaborating with the field “from the South”. This post explores the reflections that emerged from incorporating these articulations into research practice.

Contributions from Feminist STS

In our chapter, we engaged with the classic literature of Feminist STS. The field is flourishing all over the world, so it would probably be unfair to name every feminist scholar and leave many unmentioned. As representatives of the field, I will highlight two scholars who were founders and pioneers, Adele Clarke and Donna Haraway. 

In mentioning Professor Adele Clarke, who passed away in January this year, I would also like to honour her by joining the many moments in which her fruitful academic contribution to the field of STS, and specifically to the area of Feminist STS and Feminists in Health, has been recognised.
 

Biomedicalization: Technoscientific transformations of health, illness, and U.S. biomedicine [Image credit: Duke University Press]
 

The author develops the concept of biomedicalisation and deepens it by defining stratified biomedicalisation. She shows how technological advances in biomedicine are experienced unequally by societies and populations and can exacerbate health inequalities. This idea is particularly useful for understanding unequal worlds, such as Brazil, where advanced medical technologies coexist with limited access to any technology. 

Another Feminist STS scholar who is fundamental to our analysis is Donna Haraway, who highlights the concept of situated knowledge. Haraway also places ideas such as justice and knowledge at the heart of discussions about technologies, using metaphors from biomedicine itself: 
 

“[…] feminist questions shape vision-generating technologies for science studies. Freedom and justice questions are intrinsic to the inquiry about the joinings of humans and nonhumans. Feminist technoscience inquiry is a speculum, a surgical instrument, a tool for widening all kinds of orifices to improve observation and intervention in the interest of projects that are simultaneously about freedom, justice, and knowledge.”  

Donna Haraway (2018, p. 219)  
 

These authors' work particularly supported our analysis of the role of tools in healthcare in a localised and relational way.

Contribution with Feminist STS

Based on our analysis of ethnographic data from Brazil, there are two points that I believe can contribute with STS. First, when talking about contributions "from the South", I propose to draw attention to the plurality of realities and the multiple meanings of the South when it is included in the category of the South. I argue that efforts should be made to understand what it means to situate our research in the category of the Global South and to explore its multiple meanings, as well as what motivates the adoption of this category. Unpacking this category contributes to the advancement of the STS field. It also helps to avoid reinforcing a homogeneous perspective of the South.
 

The second point emerging from our empirical work in Brazil is to encourage the adoption of concepts and analytical tools that deepen the analysis of racial, social and gender inequalities and other justices/injustices. Such an analysis is fundamental to understanding and explaining the practices of medical technologies in Brazil. The adoption of the concept of intersectionality, for example, is not just to follow a trend. Rather, Its adoption as an analytical tool in STS work helps us to think about the effects and legacy of colonialism and exploitation in the formation of society. These effects and legacy have resulted in persistent inequalities within Brazilian society and, consequently, in the way that technologies in Brazil are practised in healthcare. 

This means that specific concepts can help explain local realities and encourage engagement with diverse academic productions that contribute to theory development. 

To conclude, I would like to reiterate the continued creative effort to develop new categories and concepts that capture specific and localised practices from different places, a central element in strengthening the global STS field.

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Mariana Pitta Lima holds a PhD in Public Health from the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. She is currently a post-doctoral researcher at CIDACS-Fiocruz, Bahia, Brazil. She is part of the Backchannels Global South editorial team.